UFOs once visited a school in Africa?

For many years, UFOs (unidentified flying objects) have been a subject of academic ridicule for those who believe in them.

Imagine you're having a friendly conversation with a stranger and the person finally says, "Can you believe it, I saw Bigfoot on Saturday." Then you may feel skeptical and unbelievable. So what if a third person joins the story and corroborates it? And then a fourth, fifth, and gradually a total of 62 people confirm that same story, what do you think? Is each of them lying? What if these witnesses were children? But what if none of them admitted to making up the story?

This is exactly what happened at Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe in 1994. Except the children didn't claim to have seen Bigfoot but aliens - not just one but two aliens plus a spaceship parked outside the school yard. the aliens walk around, talk to the children telepathically, give messages about impending environmental disaster and then leave.

All of the witnesses in this story are children between 6 and 12 years old. Their interviews show sincerity in a way that only children can. To this day some people still believe it was all a hoax or a grand illusion. But there are others who are convinced that it really happened.

However, things gradually changed, when a number of military leaders and high-ranking politicians around the world were said to have admitted this phenomenon. Not only in America, Europe, but even in Africa, UFOs also cause a stir in public opinion.

UFOs appear before students?

Ariel School is located in Ruwa, a small rural area, 22km from Zimbabwe's capital Harare. At the time before the UFO incident, this place was not even a town, but just a locality associated with agriculture. Ariel is a private, high-tuition school whose students mostly come from wealthy, middle-class white families.

The UFO incident occurred on September 16, 1994 , while teachers were attending a meeting in the school, and students were enjoying their mid-morning break playing outside.

Illustration of Ariel school students and UFOs. (Photo: IT).

Returning to the classroom, the children scrambled to tell the teacher a strange story but were all dismissed as a myth. The next day, many parents came to school to find out what strange thing had happened to the children. Soon after, the story was also popularized on ZBC radio. Soon, foreign journalists and many UFO experts also came to the school to learn more.

The first reporter on the scene was Tim Leach of the BBC. He went to school three days later and was shocked by what he heard when he interviewed students. 'I can easily process information from war zones, but cannot understand this event ,' he said.

After Leach, Zimbabwean UFO researcher Cynthia Hind arrived at the school the next day. She asked the children about their stories and asked them to draw what they saw. Two months later, John Mack, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University, USA also came and conducted many more interviews.

In all three interviews, 62 students, ranging from 6 to 12 years old, told pretty much the same story. Accordingly, while playing outside, they saw some UFOs. These silver objects have a disc shape and appear very clearly in the sky. At least one of the flying saucers is believed to have landed in a field just outside the school boundary.

Then, one to four large-eyed, black-clothed creatures left the UFO and approached the children. Some students confessed to running away out of fear, but older children stayed and observed them.

From here, the story versions begin to differ. According to Professor Mack, the aliens communicated telepathically with the children. It is said that they issued an ecological warning to the students, saying humans must stop polluting the planet, or the world will end. Hind, on the other hand, later accepted Mack's explanations and added them to later versions in her own interpretation.

Trust and skepticism

Of course, the question is what did the children actually see? According to UFOlogists, the Ariel event was one of the most important UFO sightings in modern history . However, skeptics considered the incident to be a hoax.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Hind said that an important factor affecting people's beliefs is that children do not agree with each other . Many children said they saw strange entities but did not believe they were aliens.

UFOs and aliens through the drawings of witnessing students. (Photo: IT).

Some rely on local folklore to explain the sightings, that the creatures are 'Zvikwambo' (human souls raised by magic) or 'Tokoloshe' (evil elven creatures in Shona and Ndebele folklore).

Hind said that because they live in the countryside, children may not be familiar with the idea of ​​UFOs in popular culture. Many children do not get to watch Hollywood movies or television series about aliens.

Therefore, she feels their reports are trustworthy because their imaginations are not influenced by movies, as evidenced by their many different interpretations. One or two children could lie, but here there were more than sixty children recounting the exact same incident, it was hard to believe that nothing unusual had happened here.

However, Hind's interpretation was rejected by many people. They believe that, before the Ariel incident, Africa was also covered by UFO fever in the media.

The children themselves come from well-off families and have access to all modern conveniences. They also do not live isolated from audio-visual media. Additionally, Hind interviewed the children in groups, making their stories vulnerable to cross-influence.

Mack's results were even more troubling. He visited the children a few weeks after the incident. This gave the children enough time to weave a richer story.

Mack also has somewhat of a reputation for leading his witnesses. In particular, it is believed that he may have 'fostered' the children with the idea that the creatures communicated with them telepathically.

Additionally, while 62 students claimed to have seen something, dozens more admitted to not seeing anything. Some saw one UFO, others saw more. Some saw one creature, and some saw four.

Ultimately, everyone will continue to draw their own conclusions about the Ariel UFO incident . Ufologists will find reasons to believe and skeptics will try to find holes in the children's accounts to refute it. They say the incident may have been a case of mass hysteria, but offer little evidence as to why they think so.

To this day, 28 years later, many students present at that time still affirm that their story is true. And until now, everything remains a mystery.